


Flavor of Love ch01

by ythmir



Category: Midnight Cinderella
Genre: Cooking, F/M, Fluff, haha - Freeform, sweet nothings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 03:52:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13449963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ythmir/pseuds/ythmir
Summary: part of midnightvalentine 2k17 collab





	Flavor of Love ch01

**Author's Note:**

> part of midnightvalentine 2k17 collab

Alyn Crawford had a plan. Part of that plan involved him trying to be romantic for the first time in his life.

He entered his quarters quite certain that no one had seen him do so. He had arrived back in the palace a good whole day just to ensure that. It was not that he was hiding exactly, only that for now he would rather not deal with any unnecessary questions with the box he was holding in his hands.

It was a hard find, this particular present, and he did not want anyone nosing around about it. Not only was it months in the making, it was also particularly damn hard to make and he did not want it spoiled or gossiped before he was ready to give it.

Alyn had had to come up a whole lot of unnecessary excuses just so no one would be the wiser with his frequent trips out of the castle. He was lucky that with the constant influx of bureaucrats into Wysteria, border patrols never ran out of style. And he had made the most out of that. Then again, even official seals of assignment had never stopped the Princess from asking anyway.

“Border patrols, again?” She had asked him the third time. He had only casually mentioned it during their training and her initial response had been to almost ram a knight with the shield she had in her hands. “You’ve been on them so many times already! Did someone die and Alder is invading again?”

“Nobody died.” He had answered. “And it’s just for five days.”

Although, the assurance had been more for himself than for the princess. He was never fond of the times he was far away from her, and he knew with absolute certainty that he never would. But at least on these particular excursions, he was away with purpose. However, she did not need to know any of that.

She had sighed, sheathing her sword and pouting. “Fine. Can’t be helped. Part of your job after all.”

“Don’t miss me too much.” He had added, trying to lighten the mood.

She had stuck out her tongue. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that?” She had tried appearing unfazed. But he knew the way her lips always formed a thin line whenever she tried hiding how she was worried. And back then, her lips were as thin as they could be.

The important thing was that he was done, he thought, as he placed the box on his worktable. He no longer had to go away to the farthest reaches of Wysteria, no longer have to see her worry over him or watch her turn away just before he rode his horse, and more importantly, he no longer had to ride for days on end before he could see her. Now, all it took was climbing few stairs and some turns and she would be before him, with her smile and her coyness and her teasing smirk.

Gods he missed her smirk.

No, that would be amiss. Alyn missed everything of her.

As he took out the special ribbons he had hiding in his closet and began wrapping the present, Alyn made a mental note of turning down any assignment in the foreseeable future that meant being away from the castle. He was not sure he could take being apart from her any more than he already had. Every fiber of his being ached to touch her the moment he had crossed the palace gates. It was almost as if it physically hurt him to be away for so long.

Though he did have to stop himself from addressing the need to see her immediately. Alyn knew he had to go about this right, his timing had to be perfect. He had to be romantic about it.

So instead of racing towards her chambers, as he always did whenever he got back from an assignment, Alyn had dragged his feet towards his quarters, reminding himself all the while that he had to be patient. Just as he had been patient with collecting everything he needed for her present.

Some things could not be hurried.

And this was one of those things.

***

It was almost daybreak when Alyn finally finished.

He took a few seconds to regard his handiwork. He nodded, satisfied, and gave himself a mental pat on the back. Not bad. Wrapping things in pretty bows was not his strongest suit but he did a pretty decent job.

He smiled to himself. He hoped she would like it.

Realizing the thought made him suddenly self-conscious and he coughed uneasily.

Right.

Alyn tucked the gift under his arm and then proceeded to head for her chambers. It was a good two hours before she had to wake up. The chance of seeing her first thing in the morning made him smile to himself again.

There would be a whole lot of teasing to be done.

However, as Alyn turned the corner into the hallway leading to her room, the first thing he noticed was the startling fact that his two best men were nowhere to be found.

Alyn frowned. He had given them specific instructions to not have her out of their sight whenever he was away. What in the gods’ holy names made them disobey that?

He braced himself as he pushed the door and stepped into her room, hoping that he would find all three of them inside playing cards or something more sinister. The bedroom was empty. As a matter of fact, it seemed to have been unoccupied for hours.

Alyn noticed that the covers to her bed were a mess. Books were strewn from there all the way to the sofa, her favorite inks were on the floor, paint was smeared messily on the ends of a curtain, and, as he took a good look around, her best hiking boots, which she usually propped just outside her bath, were nowhere to be seen.

For a moment, he stood there, at a loss for what to do next. And for a moment, panic bubbled inside him and he tried to calm down by reminding himself that the mess he was surrounded by was just what she usually left in her wake.

He began picking up the books she had left behind, unable to shake the uneasiness he felt. When he was done, he wondered if he should wait until she got back and surprise her then. But if she did not return until after the palace staff had woken up, then it would mean that all his efforts would be in vain.

Two months down the drain.

His near impeccable wrapping gone to waste.

He did not want that.

So Alyn made his way to her second favorite place.

She could be studying something or perhaps preparing for another speech or soiree. Probably with Giles and - he hoped not - with Leo. But as Alyn poked his head into the library, he found it dark and empty.

Still, as he took a good look around to make sure she was not tucked away in some corner and dozing off, he caught the whiff of newly snuffed candles. An inspection of the fireplace, and the attendant books haphazardly stacked on an armchair across it, proved his guess that she had been there recently.

So where was she now?

Alyn sighed and crossed his arms, suddenly remembering how it had been very difficult to constantly have to look for her during her first year as the Princess. Although she had mellowed the past few years, she still sometimes tried to wander off, and it was still something he would rather do without.

She’s not scaling the walls again. Is she?

Alyn shook his head.

No. She promised she wouldn’t again ever.

He imagined her sitting on the armchair, hair loose and legs folded underneath her. He imagined her looking up at him and smiling. He imagined her teasing him at being such an idiot because the clues were right there and he should have seen them and -

Ah.

***

If asked back then if Alyn would have fallen for the princess elect, he would have laughed and then said, “Who the hell falls in love with a wall-climbing hooligan?”

He was glad that he had not been asked. And he was glad that he had not given that answer.

If asked when it was that he thought he had fallen in love with the Princess, Alyn would not have laughed. As a matter of fact, Alyn would not have answered at all, being extremely private. But he would, if pestered enough, give you his first fondest memory of them together.

“When I outbaked her.”

When she was still a commoner and not yet the Princess Elect, she had a tutor most days and a confectioner on weekends, helping around in her neighbor’s bakeshop. It was not a surprise to Alyn then that she knew a lot of things: from basic arithmetic and languages, to how to grow plants and clean a fish, guts and all.

What had been a surprise was that she almost did not know her way around a kitchen. She was a confectioner after all; surely it meant that she knew how to cook. But that was not the case.

“I decorated.” She had said.

She did know the basics though. Except everything else seemed to dissolve into obscurity. Details, he remembered her telling him, which were unimportant.

“It’s all about the end product.” She had declared taking a bite out of the macaroon she had just made and then smiling at her success. “Cookbooks just get in the way.”

“Well, sometimes you can’t skip them.” Alyn had scoffed at her.

“They’re not the gods commandments, Alyn. Just guidelines. Besides, making sweets isn’t so simple. Otherwise everyone would just pop sugar cubes in their mouth. Where’s the fun in that?”

This, Alyn had found ridiculous. Cooking was definitely more of a science than art. And some desserts worked because they were tried and tested. But she had waved his teasing away with a determined smirk and the words, “I can outbake you.”

He had laughed, “That’s not even a real word.”

“Person who does a better chocolate cake gets the last say?”

Much to Alyn’s delight, and to her chagrin unfortunately, she had been unsuccessful in her attempt to ‘outbake’ him. Alyn’s cooking skills was one of his best kept secrets after all and she had been dumbfounded by it. She could do nothing but admit that his cake tasted better than hers.

That, and everyone else in the palace had taken better liking to his creation.

“I did outdesign you though.” She had said, unable to accept clear defeat, motioning to the perfect twirls of cream on her own cake. To which Alyn, and everyone else in the palace, could only agree.

Her specialty was confectionary after all.

She also still maintained that cooking was, first and foremost, an art.

Regardless, Alyn was glad he had taken her up on her challenge. And he was even happier that they had by some unspoken mutual agreement, in the years succeeding, would always try to outbake each other on that special day. That had been the thing where they found common ground. Just like him, she found cooking (or making sweets to be specific) as an outlet to relax. And it was as if they saw each other in a different light.

She no longer ran away from the sight of him, or tried to escape whenever he was the one assigned for guard duty. She no longer teased him endlessly with Leo, or purposefully avoid going to his general direction. She also was no longer much of a grouch when they rode together or when he taught her basic self-defense.

“Your areas of expertise are battlefields and kitchens. That’s ironic.” She had commented.

“Says the person who bakes but cannot fry a fish to save a life.” He had answered.

“Rude.” Then, she had been silent for a while. “I don’t really care much about any other kind of cooking to be honest. I will leave it in your capable hands. Although I want to try and make something that wasn’t Wysterian.”

“You’ll be needing cookbooks for that.”

“Or I can just wing it by tasting them.” She chewed on her lip.

“Your tongue has limits.”

“And yours doesn’t?”

Alyn had scoffed. “We can find out.”

She had started smiling a whole lot more too. She laughed more earnestly, was more enthusiastic even during simple tea parties, and somehow seemed more at ease in the castle than she had ever been. There were even instances when she would voluntarily submit herself to his quarters, at times just to pester him because she felt bored or feed him something she had recently tried creating.

The only downside was that she always did shoo him away whenever she spent time in the kitchen, teasing him to be spying on her, or otherwise declaring him an outright enemy of the state.

“I have nothing to teach someone who doesn’t believe this is art.” She had said when he had tried to check up on her.

It had been nothing at first but as they days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to years, and as they became closer than Alyn could ever have imagined the first time he had seen her, it began to bother him more and more.

There was a glow in her that lit whenever she emerged from the kitchens, clothes still smelling of sugar and cream and vanilla, as if her very skin was sweetness and honey. She was radiant enough as she was but when she had something in her hands that she had made, she was positively beaming.

And Alyn, for all his quietness and privacy, wanted to be part of that.


End file.
